Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in Americans and breast and prostate cancer are among the leading types of cancers in women and men respectively. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), cancer was the number two cause of death in America behind heart disease in 2004 responsible for over a half million deaths. ACS estimates that in 2007 9% of all male cancer deaths will be from prostate cancer and that 15% of all female cancer deaths will be from breast cancer, Cancer Statistics 2007 (2007) pgs. 2-4 Online. Internet 8 Dec. 2007 Available: www.cancer.org. Compounds that demonstrate anti-proliferative activity, anti-invasive activity and activity in stabilizing junctional complexes can be used to treat cancer cells and for this reason have the potential to be used in the treatment of cancer patients. Thus, there is a need for compounds which demonstrate anti-proliferative activity, anti-invasive activity and which demonstrate activity in stabilizing junctional complexes. There is also a need for methods of manufacturing these compounds and using these compounds to treat cancer cells.
Efforts have been made relating to the anti-tumor promotion activities of cembratrienes including the following articles: Saito, Y.; Takayawa, H.; Konishi, S.; Yoshida, D.; Mizusaki, S. Carcinogenesis 1985, 6:1189-1194; Saito, Y.; Nishino, H.; Yoshida, D.; Mizusaki, S.; Ohnishi, A. Oncology 1988, 45:122-126; Saito, Y.; Tsujino, Y.; Kaneko, H.; Yoshida, D.; Mizusaki, S. Agric. Biol. Chem. 1987, 51:941-943. However, each one of these references suffers from one or more of the following disadvantages: failure to teach the treatment of existing cancer cells, failure to teach anti-proliferative activity, failure to teach anti-invasive activity, anti-metastatic activity or failure to teach activity in stabilizing junctional complexes. For the foregoing reasons there is a need for compounds that display activity against cancer cells including the specific activities described above, methods of producing these compounds, and methods for treating cancer cells with these compounds.